Every Sunday afternoon I send out a newsletter to the HMS educators and I include a professional article that I hope will cause some reflection or new learning for the staff. Recently I shared a New York Times op-ed entitled Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office. The basic premise of the article is that while girls outperform boys during the school years, that advantage appears to erode once they reach the workplace.
Whether our role is parent or educator, we have an obligation to treat both genders equally knowing that unintended bias may crop in. Certainly, there is research to suggest that despite our best intentions, we may inadvertently parent or teach our boys and girls differently in subtle ways. While we may not see the effects of this problem until our kids are teenagers, how can we begin to reverse this trend?
The author suggests that many girls (and similarly wired boys) overachieve and work so hard to be perfect that the game of school is not about learning so much as it is focused on the need to please. Let’s encourage these children to economize their school efforts, learning when a task is high quality but “good enough”. Obviously, there are plenty of kids who need the opposite encouragement, but it’s clear that many girls and boys are perpetually anxious, staying up until 1 in the morning to overstudy…just in case.
We can also affirm our students that it’s just fine to experience some anxiety about school. A bit of stress is necessary to get back in the game every day.
Check out the article and feel free to comment, I’m not supporting backing down from academic excellence; we just have to help our children balance the different aspects of their young lives.